A CENTURY ago today a first run of milk powder emptied from machinery at a Port Fairy site now one of the biggest opiates processing plants in the world.
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A 1920s building where horse-drawn carts once delivered milk is today still a goods receiving area but workers are astounded to reflect that dairy paved the way for pharmaceutical manufacturing in Port Fairy.
"It's because it started as a dairy factory," Louise Nagle, a plant worker of 34 years, said.
A curved wall near the plant's Princes Highway entrance proudly shows its history under former Glaxo ownership, producing milk powder, baby food and from 1955 pharmaceuticals such as penicillin.
Since 1971 the site has processed poppies harvested in Tasmania, firstly for morphine and now under Sun Pharma, the owners since 2015, for five pain relief pharmaceuticals potentially in millions of dosages worldwide.
Compliance officer Ms Nagle started at the plant cleaning glassware and is now among the site's longest serving workers.
"When I started there was a staff of approximately 50, all in their 50s and older. There were two women working on site. There were only three buildings, and then old warehouses," she said.
"I worked 17 years in the lab and with antique equipment, now it's all this fancy equipment."
Today eight processing buildings and many more storage and office buildings stand at the site, employing 138 workers, the most of any private enterprise in Port Fairy.
About 50 workers gathered socially distanced at a lunchtime celebration scaled down due to COVID-19 on Wednesday, when civic leaders and company management delivered messages reflecting on the site's journey.
Head of the opiates business Urvish Bhavsar said the site exports 95 per cent of the opiate product and is currently responsible for 25 to 30 per cent of the world's market share.
He said there was a trend in the plant's history of rejuvenation every few decades.
"Every 20 or 30 years when you have a new product or new process the site finds a new form," Mr Bhavsar said.
"I think if you have good people they can make new things, new business and they can turn an old car into a Mercedes."
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Jackson Graham
Jackson is a reporter for The Standard.
Jackson is a reporter for The Standard.
